Winter Back in the Day
I always have to laugh (bitterly) when I see idyllic paintings of people ice skating outdoors gracefully in their cable knit sweaters. When I was a kid, the only rinks available were outdoors, and the temperatures would often plummet to 40 below. I was wearin twenty-seven snowsuits and had my head and face swathed in a scarf gone crusty from my frozen breath. Believe me, it's tough emulating Peggy Fleming when you look and move more like the Michelin man.
The nearest rink to our house was a good half hour's walk away, so by the time I got there, I was already frozen stiff. Thankfully, there was a community centre with forced-air heaters, wooden floors and benches where one could change from boots to skates, and use the washroom facilities, the latter of which I tried to avoid. All those layers of clothes, with their buttons, snaps, zippers and laces, were difficult to deal with, with fingers stiff and sore from the cold. As much as some kids sought the comfort of the heat indoors, I found the agony of my defrosting toes (my white figure skates did nothing to keep my feet warm) worse than the cold, so I tended to remain outdoors for many hours at a time.
To that end, I once got the brilliant (*heavy sarcasm*) idea to
skate all the way to the rink, over the snowy sidewalks, thereby skipping the need to change footwear or worry about my boots bein stolen while I was outside. Predictably, I regretted this decision some five or six hours later, when I could no longer endure the pain in my frostbitten toes and had to head for home. I couldn't walk, much less skate, and ended up crawling all the way home, sobbing, on my hands and knees, my bladder full to bursting.
Mom clucked and consoled me, but even she had to wait until my icy laces thawed before she could remove my skates to rub my feet while I howled in misery.
There was a pretty place to skate, on the frozen duck pond in Kildonan Park. Our parents would drive my brother and me there for a Sunday skate. The adjoining pavillion was an attractive facility that played music outdoors and had hot chocolate vending machines. The trouble was that there were huge cracks in the ice that made skating difficult. I liked to pretend that I wasn't a bulky kid tripping clumsily over huge fissures, but one of those pretty young movie actresses in a turtle neck and red flannel skirt, doin dainty pirouettes to the music. I always went home with lots of bruises on my knees.
Our parents were there to ensure that we frequently warmed up inside, before our feet froze, and if we hinted just the right amount without outright asking, they'd treat us to a hot chocolate to warm up our innards. Nearby there was a great toboggan hill, and on days when it wasn't as cold, we'd enjoy the rest of the afternoon sliding. It was a real luxury to have a Daddy there to help us climb back up the hill, and I loved it when he would join us on our toboggan.
Nowadays you couldn't pay me enough to have me spend hours outdoors in the winter, and the temperatures were consistently colder back in the days before global warming. When did I become such a wimp?
